“Where a public official reasonably believed that information had been given under a statutory procedure in circumstances which gave rise at that time to a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the statute prohibited disclosure for purposes other than those to which the Act related, that information was exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.”

“Officers of the Security Service, MI5, are being accused of ‘outsourcing’ the torture of British citizens to a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency in an attempt to obtain information about terrorist plots and to secure convictions against al-Qaida suspects.”

” The commercial court of Mr Justice Andrew Smith was stuffed with barristers last Thursday, but one QC was the main focus of attention. The case was the challenge to bank charges that could affect every bank current account holder in Britain. At the original hearing in February, Laurence Rabinowitz represented the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of eight lenders accused of levying unfair overdraft charges. It also fell to him to put the lead argument to the court for all the banks, saying that the alternative would be to charge on every transaction.”